There is an old poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning that counts the many ways we are loved. We’ve heard countless times that diamonds are forever. How about love? Is love forever? How can we know if it is?
Leo Tolstoy once wrote: When you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.
In Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s words: “I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I’m with you.”
Leo and Elizabeth are both gone from this earth. Does their love live on? If so, how can we know?
Look back at what we just read. Their expressions of love have been written down, permanently etched on humanity’s collective psyche, and engraved everywhere it can be. That is how we can know it lives on.
If humanity’s love lives on in the written word, how can we know God’s love lives on?
He sets his love for us in stone.
Exodus 28:11 describes the making of one singular part of the ephod worn by the priests of the temple. Two stones were to be engraved, one with the names of six of the tribes of Israel, and the other with the rest.
This was a sign of God’s love for his chosen people. Each tribe’s name was written down, forever etched in man’s memory, and even carved into the permanency of stone.
Yet, how do we know God’s love for his children really lived on past that singular moment 3,500 years ago? We only need look to the Word of God, for it contains all the stories of how God proved his love over and over to Israel. He never abandoned her, even when she treated him with scorn and disrespect.
Tolstoy says we love someone because of who they are.
Browning says we love because someone makes us better.
God says he loves us because he chooses to, and he writes our names in stone so that we will believe him.
How does God say he loves us? He takes his finger and writes our names on his heart. The Bible tells us so.
Copyright © 2014 MyChurchNotes.net
Code: FGO.L.25.13c.vp